I know I’m probably just about the last one to talk about this, but Sims 3 is coming to the iPhone platform later this year (June 2) as well as PC, Mac, and other mobile devices (including the Nintendo DS). I just have to wonder why EA bothers. Why does EA bother to spend valuable time developing and porting applications to BREW, J2ME cell phones, and have to package the game for the DS? The iPhone and iPod Touch (in North America) sales have passes ~23m while the DS still sits around just 10 million–the iPhone/Touch marketplace (app store) is a thriving place to sell apps and with trivial apps like iFart Mobile getting many hundred-thousand purchases, a game will do much better (at least that’s what I think).
Look at the cost of developing the game for the Nintendo DS:
- learning the older hardware and writing for it
- dealing with the low storage, memory, and video memory capacity
- dealing with the (in my opinion) poor touch (pen) API’s
- packaging and manufacturing the cartridges for the device (and shipping!)
Whereas the iPhone/Touch platform offers:
- Write in Objective-C with a great API
- get the more computer-esque abilities of the iPhone/Touch
- need I say more about the upcoming thousands of API’s?
- sell the app in a thriving market place (app store) where there are millions of devices of looking at one spot
Just my opinion.
**The stats I’ve used are from quick Google searches and I don’t stand behind them 100%